Untitled 1944 - 1945

Mark Rothko made this untitled drawing with ink, on paper. I think of Rothko as a colourist, but this ink drawing shows him thinking in line, feeling his way through some kind of primal soup. Look at the thick and thin lines that coalesce into strange figures and floating shapes. What was he thinking? Maybe he was wrestling with his demons on paper. Or perhaps he was channeling some subconscious energy? The shapes remind me of Joan Miró’s biomorphic forms, or maybe even some early Surrealist experiments with automatism. It's like he's trying to find some new symbolic language. Rothko was a deep thinker, always searching, and you can see the searching here in the tentative yet confident strokes. Artists are always building on what came before, responding to each other, and keeping the conversation going.